"You can prevent diarrhoea, you can prevent measles, you can even prevent malaria to some extent. But we've never been able to stop kids getting chest infections. They hit them like a truck." - MSF field doctor, Thailand. Project Update - 1 Jan 2001

HIV/AIDS

MSF basic information

"The worst is still to come in southern Africa. The region is facing human disaster on a scale it has never seen before." - Dr Peter Piot, Executive Director, UNAIDS Project Update - 1 Jan 2001

Tuberculosis

Tuberculosis definition and treatment

People were saying, "Just push me off the bunk, I'm going to die anyway". - MSF field nurse in a prison hospital TB programme, Siberia Project Update - 1 Jan 2001

Sleeping sickness

A brief profile on sleeping sickness

Human African trypanosomiasis, the fatal neurological disease better known as sleeping sickness, was thought to be nearly eradicated by 1965 as a result of a sophisticated multinational diagnosis and treatment effort undertaken over a period of decades. Project Update - 1 Jan 2001

Diarrhoeal disease

Diarrhoea definition and MSF treatment

"The scary thing about diarrhoea is how quickly it can kill a young child. Just a few squirts, a couple of vomits, and all the life has drained out of them. But then what I really love is watching how quickly they recover, almost in front of your eyes, once you get some fluids into them." - MSF field doctor, Uganda Project Update - 1 Jan 2001

Malaria

MSF Handbook: malaria information

Excerpts from the MSF Refugee handbook Project Update - 1 Jan 2001

Ebola and haemorrhagic fevers

Ebola definition and treatment

"We heard a story about a hospital about 100 miles to the west. Some mysterious disease had gone through it a couple of years before. It killed all the doctors, all the nurses, all the patients. Everyone. The first time we heard it we said it was just a rumour. Then other local people told us the same story. I remember thinking, 'what the hell could that have been?' " - MSF field doctor, south Sudan Project Update - 1 Jan 2001

Afghanistan

Afghans to lose vital international aid at time of most urgent need

The international medical aid organisation Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) warns of a severe deterioration in the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan. Press Release - 19 Dec 2000

Afghanistan

MSF in Afghanistan - December 2000

Afghanistan has been in conflict for over two decades. Guerrilla warfare under a brutal Soviet occupation, civil war that quickly filled the vacuum after the Russian departure, and totalitarian rule of the victorious Taliban which now controls the vast majority of the country: the health of the Afghan people has been aggrieved by each of these stages of the country’s recent history. Project Update - 19 Dec 2000

Guinea

Vaccines urgently needed to treat yellow fever epidemic

The lives of several million people are currently threatened by an epidemic of yellow fever in Guinea. Over 1.5 million doses of vaccine are desperately needed and the absence is undermining vaccination efforts by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). Voices from the Field - 18 Dec 2000

Four mothers posing in a corridor of the Hospital in Bili. All four of them are staying in the hospital with their child, that's suffering from a severe case of malaria. Since the beginning of the project in 2016, the pediatric ward already treated more than 4.000 cases of complicated/severe form of malaria.

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)

Independent medical humanitarian assistance

We provide medical assistance to people affected by conflict, epidemics, disasters, or exclusion from healthcare. Our teams are made up of tens of thousands of health professionals, logistic and administrative staff - most of them hired locally. Our actions are guided by medical ethics and the principles of independence and impartiality. We are a non-profit, self-governed, member-based organisation.

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Pneumonia definition and treatment